Are Dreamlight products compatibles with DAZStudio 4 ?

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I noticed that most of Dreamlight’s items vanished from the store… I can’t get the thumbnail image for my La Piazza Realistic Mediterranean Town meta data any more. :(

Maybe it is just a temporary fluke in the process of taking them off sale, like when the PC items go back to regular price before going back to $1.99. I would have guessed that maybe they got so many complaints about things not working in DAZ 4 that they removed them, but they removed things that DO WORK. Strange. Well, it is the DAZ new store, so strange is the new normal for now.

For your metadata thumbnail you could look on the Dreamlight website. Maybe you will find it there. Otherwise, just render the scene in a small PNG and use that. I've done that before to create thumbnails.

While there are obviously issues with Dreamlight plugins in DS4, I'm still regularly using Light Dome Pro 2 setups in DS4 by creating them in DS3, saving them off and then loading the scene in DS4 to add figures to. You lose the LDP2 controls, but can still access the lights as normal DS lights. It's a little bit more of a faff, but LDP2 isn't completely lost to you if you have a DS3 installation, or even just some saved scenes.

While there are obviously issues with Dreamlight plugins in DS4, I'm still regularly using Light Dome Pro 2 setups in DS4 by creating them in DS3, saving them off and then loading the scene in DS4 to add figures to. You lose the LDP2 controls, but can still access the lights as normal DS lights. It's a little bit more of a faff, but LDP2 isn't completely lost to you if you have a DS3 installation, or even just some saved scenes.

My approach to making use of LDP2 in DS4 has been a little different. I loaded it up in DS3, then exported the skydome as an obj, reimported it and saved it as a prop. Then (in DS3) I went through each of the LDP2 sets, and for each saved the skydome material as a material preset and (just) the sun light as a light preset.

In DS4 I just load the skydome prop, and apply the material preset and matching sun light preset - parenting the sun distant light to the skydome if I want to rotate the sky so the sun stays in the right place for the texture (as it would be in LDP2). I also load a UE2 light, and set that to IDL (bouncelight). The UE2 light, working off the ambient on the skydome, gives the ambient and skylight effects without all tthe actual sky and ambient lights in the actual LDP2 when in DS2 or 3. Works pretty well. In fact using IDL rather than all those many tens of ambient and sky lights is both neater and arguably gives a better result.

It was a bit of a pain spending an evening saving all the skydome material presets and matching sunlight presets, but having done it it's now easy and quick to use. I am, however, very unimpressed by the PA's own support for this product. Not having yet made the plugin DS4.5 compatible until the actual release and the definitive 4.5 SDK is perfectly reasonabe; not having made a DS4 version in the entire year after the DS4 release is not, in my opinion. Especially given the PAs frenetic activity in emailing people on his mailing lists usually more than once a day every day trying to entice buying yet more training products, I find his not having spent the time to produce a DS4 update of LDP2 quite inexcusable. He is very unlikely to get any more of my money, and certainly not for anything - like a plugin - that will need future support.

I am, however, very unimpressed by the PA's own support for this product. ... Especially given the PAs frenetic activity in emailing people on his mailing lists usually more than once a day every day trying to entice buying yet more training products, I find his not having spent the time to produce a DS4 update of LDP2 quite inexcusable. He is very unlikely to get any more of my money, and certainly not for anything - like a plugin - that will need future support.

He inundated my inbox with ads for his other unrelated businesses until I threatened to report him under Sweden's data protection laws. I think he's essentially moved on from 3D. I hope I'm wrong and that he'll return with updates, though, because he really does know lighting inside and out!

So there's most probably no update for Light Dome Pro 2? I'm waiting for over a year now since I don't have DS3 installed anymore.

Well maybe it would be a very good idea to mention on the product page that it's not compatible with DS 4 and DS 4.5. - under additional information there's a big N/A next to compatible software. Very uncool.

I honestly don't think it is a case of not bothering but a case not not being able to do so. I don't know the reasons but I can sumise which I won't share as I don't know for sure. :)

All I know is that he made promises back in the old forums about upgrading his plug-ins once 4.5 was done, so I'm willing to give him a little while to make good, but It'd be easier to do if he'd actually marked the products that don't work in 4.0 and 4.5 on their listings. I think that's what 's rubbed so many of us the wrong way. That and the fact that he keeps sending hundreds of emails in the last year, promising to show the secrets of getting filthy rich selling CG products on the internet., yet rarely responds to questions or posts.

Come to think of it, maybe that's the secret: keep selling products that no longer work for over a year, don't give any notice that they don't work in the only version of Daz Studio currently available, collect the cash from the people who don't realize it until after the 30 day return policy is up, and wait until 4.5 before actually starting to work on anything. Ka-Ching!

What I wanna know is if the Product "Motion Master for DAZ Studio" will work in DS4.5 pro. I really want that, but if it doesn't work, I won't touch it.

DS4.5 has true motion blur as a render option now...so that plugin may not be worth updating

And I can't for the life of me figure out how to make that work. No matter what I do, it doesn't work.

I used it over the weekend so it does work..make sure your object is animated,activate motion blur in render setings and thats all you should need to do.maybe start a new thread for more in depth help?

Hi, I contacted Dreamlight today and below is part of the reply I received. Not what I wanted to here, but at least it answers a few questions.

Dreamlight still develops 3D props, light sets and online training, and will offer a real store option in near future.

Due to the issues we had with plug in development in the past, with code being broken with each DS version -- I've put similar products on hold.

Dreamlight will resume plug in development in near future, but there are no dates set.

...and this is why I have little interest n working with 4.5. I love my LDP2 and Azure Skies as they give my work such a nice quality not obtainable with IDL sets like UE. It is so bleeding simple to use. Why do we need to backtrack to a more cumbersome clunky system?

...the same holds true for Mood Master2.

Two of my most useful and important tools will not work in Daz's "latest and greatest."

LOL I won't be drawn in to airing my thoughts on this matter but I will say that I learn't to do without them for so long now I have moved on and use others things. Yes it is a shame but what can we do apart air our concerns and hope that at least some products get updated.

The problem is: I would love to try DavidGB's workaround, but I don't have DS3 installed anymore. Cluttering up my clean installation of Windows and it's registry is not something I want to do ...

I can't get that to work for nothing :( I have the skydome saved as a prop and the images saved as MAT files to apply to it, but I can't get the lighting to look anything close to how it should :( When you save the light presets, the only active lights you see in the Scene tab are the Sunlight and the preview lights, and those don't look very close to the final render. I attempted to add the UE2 light like he mentioned but it never lights up the scene when I add it and I don't know how to use the dumb thing :( I've never used it before and am a complete loss :(

At the very least I can still use the backgrounds in my scenes for DS4+ now, but I want the light presets :( It's like a waste of money buying LDP2 as well as Mood Master if I can't use either one of them now. I don't want to keep DS3 installed forever. I only reinstalled to try the workaround which isn't working :(

The problem is: I would love to try DavidGB's workaround, but I don't have DS3 installed anymore. Cluttering up my clean installation of Windows and it's registry is not something I want to do ...

I can't get that to work for nothing :( I have the skydome saved as a prop and the images saved as MAT files to apply to it, but I can't get the lighting to look anything close to how it should :( When you save the light presets, the only active lights you see in the Scene tab are the Sunlight and the preview lights, and those don't look very close to the final render. I attempted to add the UE2 light like he mentioned but it never lights up the scene when I add it and I don't know how to use the dumb thing :( I've never used it before and am a complete loss :(

What I said was:

1 Export the LDP2 skydome as a prop.
2 From LDP2 in DS3, save a material preset from the skydome (ONLY) for each LDP2 sky that you have.
3 From LDP" in DS3 save a light preset of the sunlight ONLY for each LDP2 sky. ONLY the sunlight. NO preview lights, NO ambient lights, NO skylights. ONLY the sunlight. (select the sunlight, then save a light preset with the option to only save selected light).

Then in DS4/4.5 load the skydome prop, select it and apply one of the sky MAT poses, and apply the matching light preset. Your scene should at this point have one source of illumination: the sunlight, plus the skydome, from the MAT, has its ambient set high so is visible anyway. Now you add the UE2 light with the Environment Mode set to Bounce Light (Gi) (where GI stands for Global Illumination) - there is a Bounce Light (GI) preset in the UE2 folder if you don't want to touch the UE2 parameters.

With the UE2 on Bounce Light (GI) it illuminates the whole scene from the illumination from the sun bouncing around, and also the ambient coming from the skydome. The UE2 Bounce Light (GI) replaces the skylights and the ambient lights from the original LDP2. It is also in effect the way e.g. the Poser lighting is being done in the IDL lighting sets for Poser from RuntimeDNA, and is a much more advanced, accurate and simple method of lighting the scene than putting in many tens, even hundreds of basic lights as in the original LDP2 lighting, which is a very old fashioned, outdated brute force and ignorance method of lighting. Note that you can change the quality settings of the UE2 Bounce Light (GI) either manually with the parameters tab, or more easily with the quality presets in the UE2 Light Prestes folder - with low quaility giving fast preview renders at low quaility, and high quality settings taking much lomger but giving much smoother results.

DavidGB: I did follow those steps. I printed your other post about it out to reference while I did this. I have the Skydome and materials done just fine. I did also attempt the save of just the Sunlight (I tried the preview lights included later because of the results I kept getting and wanted to see if it made a difference... it's impossible to save the ambient and skylights.. they don't appear in the Scene tab and only get applied during the render). In DS4.5 I did setup the skydome with a material and applied the lighting (I only did 1 lighting test to begin with), added the UE2 and changed it to the Bounce Light (attempting to load the Bounce Light preset itself removes all other lights from the scene, so I had to do the UE2 base and adjust the parameters). The render turns out very dark and flat looking :(

There are some notes I shoould have added to my explanation of my method for using the LDP2 skies in D4 4/4.5, both for less experienced users, and also more experienced users who may be being as doppy as I was when I first tries this system.

1 When adding the Sunlight and the UE2 Bounce Light (GI), when adding the second one make sure the loading of the light is set to ADD the light, and not REPLACE. If you are set to 'replace' by default, then when you go to load the UE2 Bounce Light (GI) or sunlight, load with a CTRL-double-click, which will open the option dialogue where you can change to adding the light rather than replacing. (You can also change the default action there between the options of Add, Replace All and Replace Selected, using a CTRL-double-click on a light preset any other time you want a different option to what's set, or to change the default again.)

2 A very obvious one this, once you've finally thought of it, but you'd be surprised how long it took me to notice what the problem was when I first tried this ..... If you've saved the default LDP2 skydome as a prop from LDP2 in DS3, and all the sunlight presets just as they load up in LDP2 in DS3, you need to notice that when you then load up the skydome and a sunlight in DS4/4.5, the sunlight loads up just OUTSIDE THE SKYDOME - just above where the sun is on the matching skydome texture, pointing in at the middle. It is therefore VITAL that you set the skydome prop to CAST SHADOWS = OFF in its properties in the parameter tab (display subsection of the properties). As the sunlight is outside the skydome, if the skydome is set to cast shadows on ... the skydome itself will block any of the light from the sunlight reaching your scene because it is shadowing the entire scene! So if your skydome prop loads set to Cast Shadows On, turn them off, and then save the skydome again like that so you don't have to remember to turn of the shadows on the skydome each tiem you use it.

3 If you want to rotate the skydome to get a different bit of the sky in view when framing the render or to get the light coming from a different direction, just parent the sunlight to the skydome, then rotate the skydome, to keep the sunlight coming from the right direction to match the sky texture.

4 Note that the Azure Skies product is from a third party, not Dreamlight, and comes with DS UE presets for an Environment light to match the skydomes. So with those, you can opt to use an IBL light to go with the texture on the skydome, rather than a sunlight with UE2 Bounce Light.

(Sadly I probably won't be able to post again, if there are any questions, for a few days. Other days are hit and miss, but I'm always completely incapable of doing anything on Wednesdays after my Tuesday night weekly change of my pain med patch.)